You may have noticed that in certain business and marketing circles there exists a "backlash" against the design community. Despite the rise of attractive, user-friendly solutions, in such cirlces unattractive designs have somehow managed to remain at the verge of acceptance. You'll hear ideas being thrown around like "design is a waste of time — we have a really ugly site which outsells our competitors 3 to 1" or "we are not worried about the design, we'll outsource it or use a free Wordpress theme, let us focus more on the product".

You can almost sense a little bit of pride in how ugly their web-site is, or that they are treating design like a commodity. However off base these types of thoughts might be, there is clearly a lack of respect for designers in the business community at times. I'd like to address how you can shatter this barrier and talk to business folk in a language they understand.

This article provides you with 5 guidelines you can use as a designer to "speak business" — even if it's just to get your foot in the door or land a big project.

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